Journey's End
by Rock114
Summary: End of my "Conner" series. If you haven't, be sure to read FUBAR, Inferno, and Down by the River before this. "In the aftermath of his search for Conner, Tanner must find a way to cope with his guilt as one final chance at salvation presents itself."
1. Chapter 1

A light frost coated the ground for miles around as the first of the soft flakes of the coming storm drifted down to earth. The bristling pine needles of the trees swayed back and forth with each gust of wind as Tanner sat on his knees listening to the insignificant trickling of the water rushing down stream. His light coat, a camouflage patterned piece of clothing slightly contrasting with the faded blue of his torn jeans and the deep black of the hiking boots on his feet, failed to keep the bitter wind out entirely as winter tightened its hold. The silent breeze blowing through the calm forest numbed his face almost as much as the landscape around him had numbed the man himself. Unable to move he knelt there amid the carnage, taking in the sights of one more senseless massacre in a world on its last legs.

It had been a war. What looked like a war at the very least. Frozen corpses dotted the riverbank in various states of decay. Several of the bodies had been shredded by automatic weapons fire, displaying the grisly effects of assault rifle wounds for all to see. Eerily preserved by the cold, several of the bodies continued to writhe and twitch, trapped in a dark place between life and death. Some of the dead, the truly dead, still clutched weapons in their hands, weapons they would now never part with thanks to winter's chill. The faces of the bodies were twisted in expressions of anguish and pain. One or two wore looks of content and peace that sharply contrasted with the horror they were surrounded by, as if death for them had been a release, not a curse.

Of the countless dead around him only two of the bodies interested Tanner. One was a young woman, hair tied up in a dirty bun, laid out on the sandbar in the middle of the water. Tanner had already ensured that she wouldn't remain as one of them. From the pocket of her jacket he had extracted a worn book with the woman's name, Beth, on the cover. He tucked it away in his own pocket with a quiet tear and searched the rest of the killing field until he found the second body.

The man's face was pale with faded and dull eyes that had once been a bright green. The dark leather of his jacket let him stand out from the rest as he dragged himself toward Tanner, swiping his clammy hands through the sharp air between the two. The word "Defenders" on the back of the man's jacket was unfamiliar, but even then Tanner knew the face of Conner Bryant.

He was one of them. A walker. It hit Tanner then, a naked and relentless realization. He was too late.

He had failed.

He made a promise to a dying friend to make sure that Conner lived. After over a year of searching high and low, pursued by the dead, shot at by bandits, all the times he'd nearly died by thirst and hunger alone, this was where it had all led to. The end of his journey, a mound of frozen corpses at the side of some unimportant, no name river in the backwoods of North Carolina.

What was it all for? His group was dead. He was the only one left. Out of all nine of them it was Tanner, the one who deserved to live the least, that ended up surviving the longest.

Conner's corpse continued to paw at him ineffectually. Without being completely aware of what his body was doing, Tanner rose and strode around behind his deceased friend. The knife at Conner's waist slid out of the sheath easily enough and to Tanner it had all the weight of a feather while he placed the tip at the back of Conner's neck and angled the blade upward.

It was several seconds before he could manage any words. "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen, Conner." The subdued tone of his voice only carried his words a scant few feet, but it was enough. If anything of Conner remained inside this monster, he would hear Tanner's choked, watery words. "I… just, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean for any of that to happen. None of it."

Conner's body growled, snarling at him with an intense hunger as the flakes of snow began to pile together and from a blanket over the ground. The feral noise felt like an accusation. "I didn't want to bring Lynch down on all of you." Tanner shivered at the thought of that man and his heart, coated in an ice colder than any natural winter. The words were difficult to say as they came. Each needed to be forced out with a strength that Tanner knew was waning. "Fuck, man, just…just why? Why you and not me?"

Eyes closed and teeth clenched, Tanner put pressure on the knife and slid the blade upward. Conner's corpse momentarily convulsed, letting loose one final hiss, before it went limp and fell to the snowy ground.

Tanner reached out and respectfully slid the dog tags off from around Conner's neck. The metallic identification tags glinted in the dwindling light and made a distinctive _clinking_ sound when he shoved them into his pocket next to the other, older pair.

With weary a sigh that made him sound decades older, Tanner slid the knife back into Conner's sheath and stood on two trembling legs. The now truly dead eyes of his friend melted a guilty hole in the back of the man's head as he wordlessly strolled over to another corpse and bent down. This body, frozen solid, was actually dead. The bald man had been shot cleanly through the head, dead center, an execution. His blood had seeped down and soaked his black leather jacket inscribed with the words "Plastic Toys" before drying as brown stains that would never be removed. Tanner's hands went to the rifle next to the unfortunate soul, half buried in snow, and scooped it up. Gripping the bolt action weapon in one hand and extracting the hatchet from his belt with the other, Tanner set his eyes upriver and put one unsteady foot in front of the other.

The wind picked up, easily slicing through the feeble protection Tanner possessed as he made his way up the river. A solitary figure on one last walk through the wilderness as old man winter bore down on him with a vengeance, preparing for what he deserves to finally take him.


	2. (2) A New Group

The bitter chill whipped all around him as he struggled to focus on the looming shadow before him. With the sun gone it was difficult to make out the silhouette of the bridge, but not impossible. The concrete and metal structure spanned the width of the river, bridging the highway that cut through the forest and into the horizon in both directions. The river couldn't have been more than a dozen feet wide, but that hadn't stopped the military from trying to make use of it.

Half a dozen rusted, rickety vehicles lay in various states of disrepair and outright destruction as Tanner hoisted himself up from the river next to the bridge. Four wind beaten and torn tents kept watch over the deserted road, clustered into a circle at one side of the bridge. Their edges flapping in the wind as, curiously, the faint flickering of flames eked its way through the darkness and around the tents. A campfire.

Fire meant warmth. But it also meant-

"Can I help you?" The familiar feeling of steel touching against the back of his head stopped his heart. Tanner could practically taste the dread he felt welling up inside him. The voice was feminine but strong and the hands holding the gun to the back of his head were steady as stone. "Walk forward. Slowly."

With breath caught in his throat he gave a curt nod and began to walk until he was within the dancing light that blanketed the ground around the small fire. The woman marched him near enough that he could feel some of the soothing heat sink into his skin, a feeling he wanted to savor but that he also knew wouldn't last.

"On your knees." Tanner did as he was told, slowly bringing his hands up behind his head while the woman stepped back and and gave an edged whisper out into the cold. "Guys, get out here. I found someone."

Tanner saw two shapes emerge from behind the largest tent and step through the flurry of snowflakes that danced in the air around the campsite. One of them was massive, standing easily at 6'3, maybe higher, with broad shoulders and wrapped in a thick winter coat that was a deep blue color. He had a dark complexion and a large scar that stretched over his face from the right side of his chin and ended an inch or two above his left eye. The loose stubble clinging to his face in unorganized patches. His dark hair was brought back into a ponytail and in his gloved hands he held a shotgun pointed at Tanner's chest. He pumped it it once.

Next to the big man was someone of a more average height. He kept his brown furred hood over his head but Tanner caught a glimpse of short brown hair. The man's face was caught in what looked like a permanent scowl. His deep blue eyes were almost as cold as the wind and cut through Tanner like an icy blade. Slung over his shoulder was a scoped rifle, likely used for hunting. A bandolier on the outside of his coat held several dozen rifle rounds and about half as many pistol rounds. Both he and the large man had holsters on their thighs containing sidearms.

"I found him sneaking up on us from the river. Zack, take his weapons."

The large, scarred man with the shotgun, Zack, lumbered forward and confiscated Tanner's rifle. He eased the hatchet out of Tanner's hand and slipped it through one of the loops on his belt before he backed away and took up his position next to the smaller man again.

Keeping the gun pressed against Tanner's head, the woman behind him spoke up again. "Alright, what should we do with him? I'm open to suggestions. Tommy? What do you think?"

The smaller man with the scoped rifle stepped forward. "Kill him," Tommy hissed. "We can't afford to take risks like this after what happened last week."

"Are you sure?" The woman asked. "We don't even know him."

"No," Tommy admitted, "But we DO know that last week a group of people with AK-47's lit us up when we tried to explore that deserted cabin way out in the woods. He could be a scout for them."

The woman was silent for a few seconds. Tanner could hear the shrug in her voice. "Point taken," she conceded. "That's one thumbs down. Zack?"

Zack opened his mouth with a deep voice containing just a hint of gravel. "Boss, don't listen to Tommy. We know the real reason he's saying this."

Tommy spun to face Zack's imposing figure and jabbed a finger toward him. "Fucking. Don't. Go there. I told you."

"Hey, it sucks and I sympathize," Zack countered, "But I'm not letting you take it out on this guy."

Tommy's fists clenched. "Those four assholes in the cabin fucking killed Allen. But you weren't there, so it's not your problem, right?"

Zack, with a weary sigh, halfheartedly protested. "I was guarding the car. You know I've got enough shit on my head as it is, so don't try pinning that on me too." Instead of pursuing the argument, Tommy backed off with a scowl.

Zack turned back to Tanner and the woman, who Zack had called "Boss". "Boss, we should hear this guy out. I didn't decide to come all this way just to shoot random people in the head. We don't know who he is, and until we do we can't kill him. We're not bandits."

"Well…" the Boss trailed off, tossing her options around in her head. "I think I'm with Zack on this one. I like this camp the way it is, and scraping brain matter off the side of the tents would be a depressing way to end my night." She stepped back but kept the gun in her hand. "Come on, pal, get up and out of the snow," she ordered. "It's your lucky day. Perfect time to buy a lottery ticket."

"Boss," Zack interjected," Maybe don't joke about that stuff after you just finished holding a gun to his head?"

"No, it's alright," Tanner said, rising from the snow. "I knew a guy like that a while back. You get used to the inappropriate humor pretty quickly." Able to turn around at last, Tanner finally laid eyes on his captor, the leader of this small dysfunctional group.

She had a slender build with deep red hair streaming down to just above her shoulders. Her bright green eyes shone in the light from the campfire, giving her an eerily familiar visage that Tanner couldn't quite place. She was wearing a camouflage patterned coat nearly as thick as Zack's, equally as worn and ragged. Her pistol, a Glock, fit snugly into the holster she wore just as she hefted the AK-47 off of her back and grasped the intimidating weapon with both hands.

Tanner extended his hand and introduced himself. "I'm Tanner. And, uh, thanks for not shooting me."

"Well that's no problem, Tanner," the woman replied, ignoring his hand. "Don't take this the wrong way or anything, because it's not that I don't trust you… wait, no, it pretty much is because of that," she quipped, "But jokes aside, I don't feel comfortable with telling you exactly who we are and what we're doing _quite_ yet." She strode past him and over to Tommy without a backward glance.

"Well," Tanner said as she brushed him aside, "Can you at least give me your name, or is that secret too?"

"Lucy is fine. Now Tommy, I want you on watch. Patrol the perimeter and make sure nobody else sneaks up on us…"

The sense of familiarity returned as the sound of her name reached his ears. An echo reached up to him from the black pit that contained his memories of the past two years, but it was distorted by the screams of other memories that were best left forgotten, but hounded his dreams all the same.

"Hey," Zack called, startling him out of his thoughts. "Don't sweat it Tanner," the man consoled him, extending his dark hand and giving Tanner's a firm shake. "We're not that bad once you get to know us. Just give it time. By next week you'll be like family."

Tanner gave a soft sigh. "Mind if I go inside that tent?" he asked, gesturing to the largest one. "I'd like to get out of the cold."

"Go ahead," Zack said. "The Boss is probably going to want to talk to you, so expect her to be with you in a minute."

"Right. Great. Looking forward to it."


	3. (3) Suspicion

"Here it is," Zack said with a sweeping gesture of his arm as the two entered the tent. "The command tent. Or at least what we think was the command tent back when there was still a military." The tent walls were faded with a few small holes torn into them, likely from the years of being left to the mercy of the elements. Some wooden chairs were stacked together in one of the back corners. In the center of the tent was a rectangular folding table with three chairs seated at various positions around its edge.

Zack took a step forward. "There was this old map laid out on the table when we got here," he said. "It was too torn up to read well, though. But we did manage to read some of the notes that were written on the side."

"Notes?"

"Yeah, notes." Zack pulled out one of the chairs and motioned for Tanner to have a seat. "You know that bridge just outside? It's rigged to blow."

Examining the chair he had pulled out for himself with a careful eye, Tanner sat. "Why? And if it is, why didn't they set off the explosives?"

"We're not sure. The Kid's brother-"

"The Kid?"

"What? Oh, sorry," Zack apologized. "I just call him 'Kid' because he's pretty young. Barely 21, actually."

"Why not call him Tommy? I mean it's his name, isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Zack, pulling up another of the chairs. "But it's just what I do. Sometimes I see a person and their name doesn't match up with their face, so I just call them something else." His shotgun was resting up against one of the table's legs as he leaned forward on his arms, narrowing his eyes at Tanner. "Your name is Tanner, you said?"

In the pit of Tanner's gut he started to feel nauseous. "Yeah."

"Weird. You look more like a… John, or something.." Zack leaned backward again, resting against the back of the chair and clasping his hands together.

"My name isn't John," Tanner answered a little too quickly. "It's always been Tanner."

"Ah, sorry," Zack apologized. "If you say so." He stood again, picking his shotgun up and striding toward the tent flaps. "I need to check in with the Boss and see what she wants me to do. She'll be with you in a little bit to get to know you better." Without waiting for a reply he was gone into the dark winter night.

Alone now, at last, Tanner extracted the diary from his coat and set it on the table, cautiously flipping the front cover over to see inside. On the opposite side of the cover was Beth's name again. On the first true page of the diary was a date, _Day 1_ at the top. Hunched forward, he began to read.

_Day 1_

_I found this diary yesterday in an old bookstore, and I think I need to start writing in it. I never really liked writing, to be honest, but this is important. Just in case something happens, I'd like to have a record of this if it all goes wrong. The dates at the top are how many days since I've started writing in this since I have no idea what day it actually is anymore._

_I'm starting this diary almost a year into, well, the End of the World. The Apocalypse, I guess. I was studying to become a lawyer when everything began, and I survived by joining a group. They're all dead now, except for me and Conner._

_The reason I'm writing this is because of Conner. He and his friend Farley used to be in the National Guard, but they joined us a couple of weeks into this disaster. Something is wrong with him. Really wrong. Our group was attacked by bandits a few weeks ago, so we attacked back. And Conner killed them. The thing is, he enjoyed it. I think that he's addicted to killing._

Tanner's breath caught in his throat.

_He went mad in there. He even killed Farley. He didn't even realize what had happened until afterward, like he blacked out or something. He's taken the first step in getting better, and I can tell that he wants to, but it's going to be hard. I'll write about how it's going in here just in case something happens, like I said. Since then we met with two other survivors, Roman and Clive. They were attacked by bandits and lost most of their group at some pit stop on the highway, so that gives all of us something in common._

_I'm scared. Whenever Roman sends Conner and me out to get supplies or scout or something, I'm terrified. He could lose it at any moment. But I can't give up. I don't want to be the last one from my old group. He's all that's left of them, but he's just so dangerous._

_I don't want to be alone. _

The entry stopped there.

The discovery was a hard pill to swallow, even though Tanner wasn't completely surprised. Just before the attack on Lynch's compound he could tell that something was seriously wrong with Conner. The way he walked, held that sleek machete, that disturbingly maniacal gleam in his eyes, but Tanner couldn't say that he had expected _this_.

Before he could read further, the tent flaps flew open and Lucy strode in. Without hesitation she pulled up the chair across from him while brushing the snow off her shoulders. Her hand went to her waist, below the table, then came back up grasping her pistol. Gently, she laid the firearm on the table, barrel directed at Tanner. "Just so we know where we're at," she informed him. "So tell me, what exactly brings you to this neck of the woods? It can't be the lovely weather."

Tanner was silent. The woman stared at him expectantly, but at the same time without care. Her hand rested on the table mere inches away from the gun. As the seconds dragged on, she arched an eyebrow at him while he decided what to tell her. That strange sense of familiarity was back again as she looked on at him.

He didn't have anything to hide about his reasons for coming to North Carolina. The truth would be safe enough, for now at least. "Well," Tanner began, "I came up here looking for some friends of mine."

The woman's hand inched closer to the gun, more out of reflex than any conscious effort. "Friends?"

"Yeah. A year or so ago my group got split up." The fine details of that situation weren't important. Besides, better that Lynch stay forgotten. "I've been looking for the ones that survived ever since then."

"You've been looking for these people for a year?"

"That's right."

"Huh." The woman's eyes flicked downward at the journal that lay in front of him. "Is that theirs?"

_No, it's mine. _The lie almost escaped Tanner's lips. As the woman slid the book over to her Tanner caught sight of Beth's name on the cover. "Yeah, it was theirs," he admitted. And they were dead. For all he knew this woman and her friends were the ones that killed them. They had an automatic weapon and they were in the same area. It was probably best to not tip them off to his connection with what could have been their recent victims.

At least until he could get the draw on them. If push came to shove, that is.

"Can I have a look?" She slid the book away from Tanner and opened it up before he could speak. "Thanks."

The woman read the name on the cover then opened the book, skimming lightly over the actual words as if she were just confirming that it was actually a journal like Tanner said. She was going to fast to actually be taking in more than a few of the words. She didn't seem to care very much what was in the journal, only that Tanner hadn't been lying about it.

Then she stopped. Something she saw halted her in her tracks. He could see her bite into her lower lip as she appeared to reread one of the sentences. She attempted to hide it and her slip was gone as quickly as it had appeared, but it was there. Tanner was sure of it. She continued to skim for a few pages but she was going quicker now. She wasn't concentrating, just giving off the appearance of a casual interest in the words until she finally closed the book and tossed it back to him more hurriedly than she intended.

"Wherever they are I hope you find them," she said. "Their names are _Conner_ and Beth, right?"

He could feel her suspicion stab at him. "Yeah. I hope I find them too." Something about the manner in which she had emphasized Conner's name was unsettling.

Then she was gone. She scooped up her weapons and glided out the door into the frigid temperatures, becoming nothing more than a shadow.

* * *

><p>"Boss, you're sure?" Zack called, struggling to be heard over the wind.<p>

"Positive," she whimpered. "I saw their names. Oh Jesus, I saw them..."

Zack turned to Tommy. "I guess shooting him really would have been the wrong call."

"Fuck you too, Zack," Tommy shouted.

"Guys, we can't let on that we know. Not until we know him better. I don't trust him. He shouldn't have that... that..." Lucy stopped before finishing as the words died on her lips. The mere thought of that book was almost able to send her into convulsions of rage.

Zack was uncomfortable in the cold, pacing around in his spot to keep his mind off the numbness. "Well you're right, Boss. 'Tanner' isn't being straight with us about something. I can feel it."

"Well whatever that is we'll deal with it when the time comes," said Tommy, with a voice that was the definition of apathy. "Until then we'll keep disarming those explosives that are wired to the bridge. We could always use something that goes boom when we get into a pinch."

"Agreed," Lucy said, making a halfhearted attempt at recovery. "Most of those explosives are probably useless because they've been out here so long, but maybe we can find one… that… works?" For the first time since their conversation about Tanner began she noticed it. An indistinct mass of… something in the distance, moving toward them from the opposite end of the bridge.

"Tommy, take out your rifle and sight down the bridge." She checked the magazine on her AK while Tommy did as commanded. Zack stood there looking confused before deciding to follow his leader's example and load his shotgun.

"Uh, Boss," he ventured, feeling his blood run cold as he saw Tommy's face go white as he looked through the scope. "What's going on?"

"Shit," Tommy cursed, his anger faltering and giving way to fear. "There's got to be… a hundred of them."

Their leader checked her weapon again. "The dead, Zack," she whispered. "They're coming across that bridge. And we're in their way."

* * *

><p>Tucking the journal back into his coat Tanner groaned. Something was going on with these people. "Why do I always have to find the psychos," he sighed to himself.<p>

The barrage of gunfire took him by surprise. Shouts wound their way into his ears above the orchestra of weapons lighting up the night. The tent flap was thrown clear of the entrance by Tommy as he barged in with Tanner's weapons bundled together, throwing them on the table.

In a second he had his hatchet and the rifle in hand and rushed toward Tommy.

"Get a fucking move on," Tommy demanded. "We need you out here."

"What the hell's going on?!" Tanner screamed.

"What's going on is that we're fucked, so get a move on and help us un-fuck ourselves."

"You're trusting me with my weapons? After you held a gun to my head?"

Tommy's acidic sarcasm and biting tone prevailed over the thundering of the weapons and the howling of the breeze. "Welcome to the team. Glad to have you with us on our last day."


	4. (4) Explosive Ordnance Disposal

The creeping horde spilled over the bridge.

"Motherfuckers!"

Weapons thundered in the almost pitch blackness. The front ranks of the horde crumbled swiftly.

"Zack, left!"

_Crunch._ A walker's skull split open as the big man let his hammer fall upon it. The blow knocked it to the snow as Zack swung the hammer around and buried the claw end into the side of another's head.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fu- TANNER! BEHIND!"

Lucy's cry startled the man. Without a second thought he dove to the side and brought the barrel of his rifle around just as the walker lunged. The familiar kick of the rifle signaled the end of the creature. It collapsed, marring the once seamless surface of the snow as flakes continued to plummet down on them from above.

"Boss, there's a group going for Tommy!"

Lucy rolled, a motion that had clearly been honed with rigid practice and determination, before coming up behind a rock and emptying her weapon's magazine into a group of seven clustered just beside her that had been intent on encircling Tommy. Chunks of flesh were lifted up on the wind as they were sundered from the bodies.

Tanner buried the head of his woodcutter's hatchet into a walker's head. Kicking the body, he watched for a few seconds as the dark blood seeped from the gash in it's face, sprinkling the once pure snow beneath it.

Backing away from the horde, Lucy unleashed a torrent of lead upon the corpses as they dispersed from the bridge and moved to surround the small group. Her bullets shredded the bodies with ease, throwing severed limbs and flecks of blood all over the winter ground. She struggled to be heard above the overpowering sounds of their losing battle as she felt to comfortable _click_ of a fresh magazine locking into place. "We need a plan! They'll just keep coming!"

Zack rose from the ground, giving the twitching walker underneath him one last bash to the cranium with the stock of his shotgun. "We have to stop them from crossing the bridge!" He slammed a couple of shells into the shotgun and pulled the trigger, eviscerating the upper half of a corpse that had closed to within a few uncomfortable feet. "Can we take out the bridge at all?!"

"DIE! DIE DIE DIE!" Tommy's face glowed with red fury as he pulled the trigger of his weapon over and over again, not even bothering to aim. "I SAID DIE, YOU FUCK! STAY DOWN!" Tommy jabbed the barrel of his rifle forward like the tip of a spear. The rusted, old metal punched through a walker's teeth and into its mouth. Ecstatic rage burned behind Tommy's eyes as his gun barked. His victim slumped to the ground with a hole in the back of its neck, pathetically twitching as it came to rest at his feet. "Yeah, I was talking to you!" He cursed at it. "STAY. DOWN." Fueled by a ferocity Tanner had only seen in men with the blackest of hearts, Tommy's foot crashed down to earth with the force of a shotgun blast and struck true.

The creature's head virtually ceased to exist.

"Wait!" Tanner screamed. "The explosives! You said the bridge was wired!" He wedged his arm in front of his chest just in time as a lunging walker clumsily tackled him. It was easily thrown off. He prepared to finish it with a rifle round but the weapon's barrel was knocked away by another approaching from his flank. He retreated several steps before aiming and firing.

"You're right!" Lucy took a step forward. "If one of them works- HNG" she stopped, cut off as a pair of bony hands clamped down on her arm. A fierce yank freed her, and pulled one of the walker's arms straight out of its socket. Lacking the will to continue fighting it toppled over, quickly disappearing beneath the ever growing field of snow they were fighting in.

But there were more. Endless and innumerable they marched across the bridge, arms flailing and howling their mad deathly cries. The four of them were about to be overrun. Tanner had seen this situation plenty of times in the past two years.

Fortunately for him, he knew a thing or two about explosives. Pulling his hatchet from yet another head he dived forward, narrowly avoiding the death grasp of a pair of them as he made his way toward the bridge. If memory served, the bombs were always underneath. At least in those old war movies his father left on each night when he was a child.

A hand found his shoulder from behind, but this was different. It was warm. Not the freezing fingers of a corpse preparing to bite into him, this was a living person.

Specifically, it was Lucy. "What the hell are you doing?!" She pushed him downward and fired above his head, taking down two more. "You can't go down there, it's suicide!"

"Why the hell not?" Fumbling in his coat pockets, he managed to produce an old cigarette from a torn and wrinkled pack. "A couple friends of mine filled me in on how explosives work," he shouted. "I can rig this cigarette as an extended fuse. We don't even need a detonator, just slip this in the right place, light it, and haul ass." He threw himself upward, brushing off as much of the snow as he could while still maintaining his balance. "You three go, I'll be right behind you."

She saw the lie for what it was. "You won't make it through the horde. Tanner, you can't do this."

"Why not? Better me than someone who doesn't deserve it. Nobody will miss me." It was difficult to admit, but such barriers tended to collapse when one was faced with their demise. Though he wouldn't fool himself into thinking that his demise was undeserved. He wasn't afraid of this. In fact it felt right, more right than anything else had since the world became his own personal Hell.

She grabbed on to his hand as he pulled forward. "No! Tanner, I _need_ you to live! I'm not letting you!"

"Then who the hell will save our asses?!" he demanded. He wouldn't let her stop him. This was what everything had been leading to. A final chance at salvation, a way to make things right. He could feel them watching him as he set his sights on the catwalk leading to the underside of the bridge. Conner, Beth, Farley and all the others were watching him, waiting for him to finally do something right. He could save these three strangers and get what he deserved.

Then the cigarette in his hand disappeared. "Out of my way," Tommy growled with a forceful backward shove that sent Tanner tumbled into Lucy's arms, rattled and confused.

"NO!" Tanner lunged upward, but Lucy held firm. Tommy strode forward, producing a match from his pocket and clutching it alongside the cigarette in his hand. Around the man the horde swelled, encircling him. "Let me go!" Tanner spun and threw a punch. It connected solidly with Lucy's face and her grip loosened. "You can't do this, Tommy!" he begged.

"Bullshit I can't!" Came the response. "My brother was EOD!"

Tanner felt Lucy fly into him from behind, knocking them both into the snow. The majority of the horde had closed in around Tommy. "Get off!" Tanner punched again, landing a blow on her ribcage. "You can't let him die! Not for me!"

The woman managed a kick to the back of tanner's knee, sending him back to the ground. "Stay the fuck do- SHIT!" Tanner's hand wrapped around her neck, a stroke of luck in a blind frenzy he made from his position face down in the snow. "I said stay down!" she repeated.

"I won't let this happen!" he screeched as she bent his arm back. "Not again! Nobody else dies because of me!" Zack appeared beside them.

"You're not killing yourself for this, Tanner!" she shouted while Zack tackled Tanner and caused the smaller man to see an explosion of stars over his vision. "Like it or not you have to live!"

"No!" Tanner kept screaming as the two held him down. "Why won't you let me? He's your _friend_, and you're letting him kill himself for me, you bitch! You're crazy, both of you are goddamn nuts!"

"You have to live because you know what happened to Conner!"

Small, but pointed and hot, the feeling of hearing her say Conner's name punched through his chest like a knife. How did she know him? Why did she care? Why was this coming to light now, of all times? At the moment though, it didn't matter as he snapped his head up and bit down on one of Lucy's fingers.

To the woman's credit she didn't even scream. Blood poured as he bit harder and she tried to yank the digit back to her, only succeeding in mangling it further until she lost just enough of her concentration for Tanner to strike.

Her grip on him loosened and the opening presented itself. He rolled out from Zack's pinning hold and shoved him away. Lucy, knelt in the snow, clutched at her bloody, bent finger as Tanner ran to the bridge to stop Tommy before it was too late.

* * *

><p>Tommy stumbled as he reached the small maintenance catwalk under the bridge. The half dozen bites across his body screamed at him like sirens. The explosive charge in front of him was affixed to the stone structure fairly securely, letting him take it apart without worry of it falling and detonating prematurely.<p>

There had to be over a hundred on the bridge above him. He heard them fall behind him, plummeting down into the river a couple dozen feet below as he rewired the deadly device in front of him.

"C'mon Tommy," he whispered to himself as another splash sounded from below. "Allen was EOD. You know what you're doing."

The lit cigarette smoldered in his hand. He turned his attention away from the bomb and took a deep drag, inhaling as much of the smoke as he could. It burned his lungs as he exhaled and fought back the urge to cough. He'd never smoked before.

_Who the fuck are you kidding,_ a voice reminded him. _Your brother was the bomb expert, not you. You're screwed._

"I got this." He removed a wire. "I got this…"

_All you got is a shallow grave. Just like Allen. You were never half the survivor he was, and if he couldn't make it what chance do you have?_

"Shut up, shut up, I can do this." Gently he fixed the cigarette into the correct place. It was burning down slowly, and he estimated that he'd have a minute to get clear before the bridge turned into a pile of smoke and debris.

_Clang!_ Tommy leaped backward and away from the corpse that had tripped over the bridge above him and landed on the catwalk. He felt his foot slam into his rifle and caught sight of the weapon just as it finished careening into the rushing water underneath him. Another series of clangs beckoned from the stairs that led down tot he catwalk he was on, the way he had used to get down here in the first place. It could only mean that the undead had cut him off.

That was his only escape._ This is it. You're done._

Tommy took a deep breath.

_It's too late for you. _

"Fuck me sideways."

_Now or never._

His hands acted on instinct. He wrapped his fingers around something inside the bomb and pulled. Before everything went black he was blinded by a flash of pure white. The air was sucked out of his lungs by the combustion even as he was thrown free of the bridge and the cloud of smoke that enveloped the area. The last thing he felt was the freezing water of the river swallow him up and plunge him into its black depths before he never felt anything again.

* * *

><p>Tanner saw the bridge explode a mere dozen or so feet in front of him. His despairing cry was cut short as the shockwave rumbled over him and carried him away. Blocks of stone and brick flew through the air as the center span of the bridge transformed into a raging inferno before dropping down into the river with a thunderous splashing.<p>

For a few seconds he felt himself floating almost peacefully above the horror below. It was almost serene, in a morbid way, as he looked down at the carnage of burnt, broken bodies raining to the cold Earth with hardly a care in the world. The weightless feeling was gone as suddenly as it had arrived, sending Tanner crashing back down. The frozen ground raced toward him, not even affording him the opportunity to catch his breath before he thudded back to reality and lost consciousness.


	5. (5) It's Not About Living

Everything was ringing.

"C'mon, you… big… motherfucker…"

High pitched wailing echoed through his ears, piercing the veil and beginning to revitalize his senses.

"Just… wake up… you son… of a bitch…"

He felt an explosion in his head, jarring the cobwebs from his mind as the pain jumped at him again.

"Please, just…" The sensation of ice sliding across his back forced his eyes open. Above him was the night sky, still throwing flakes of snow down on the two of them with torrential force. A gust of wind whipped by, numbing his exposed face as Lucy dragged him along.

"Oh fuck…" Her hand released the collar of his jacket and his head fell back, burying itself halfway into the snow. A distant _click_ and a drawn out sigh greeted him as he attempted to stand. Beleaguered, he saw Lucy raise her rifle at the edge of his vision. "Fuck me sideways."

The _snap_ of the bullet flying out of the chamber is what finally brought him back, completely. A few feet away a walker fell, it's head coming apart from the bullet Lucy had sent through it's eye. The woman, red faced and panting despite the subzero temperatures, looked down at him for the first time.

"You… fucker…"

He rolled over and rose to his knees, causing another explosion to go off in his head. "What?"

"I had to… drag you…" Lucy's hands went to her knees. She was fighting a battle with her lungs to get as much air as she could.

He was sore all over. all he could remember was being thrown backward like some plaything before violently colliding with the snow and ice on the ground. "Jesus… what happened?"

Tanner rubbed as the sore spot on his head while Lucy nearly fell into a sitting position beside him. "The bridge exploded," she explained in between difficult gasps. "I pulled you out of there. Walkers were everywhere."

Still nursing his head with his left hand Tanner scanned the desolate road they were on. Flakes of snow continued to fall, ceaselessly blanketing the world with what was almost an alien purity. "Where's Zack? And Tommy?"

Lucy fell backward into the snow, unable to stay upright with the energy completely drained by her strenuous rescue attempt. "No, that's fine." Her breaths were uneven and deep. "I completely understand. Why thank me for saving your life after I pulled you through the snow. For a mile. Alone."

"Just tell me what happened."

Before she could mutter another joke, she decided against it. "Tommy's gone," she admitted. "When the bridge exploded he never came back."

Failure, that old, familiar feeling, marched onward. Another name to the list of people who had died in his place. The weight of their names, their insults and accusations both real and imagined, pulled at him tighter with each addition to that list. He felt like a car was on his shoulders, crushing him beneath rusted metal and jagged, broken, hateful parts that always reminded him of his crimes.

But he pushed that all away. Zack was still nowhere to be found. "And Zack?"

She rose from the snow. In a measured, cautious movement she was sitting upright again but looking away. "Him too. He held them off so I could get you out of there."

"No."

"What?"

"I said _no._" His snow encrusted rifle found its way into his grasp again. "I'm going back, wherever he is. He's not getting left behind."

The smooth, definitive _click_ of a bullet sliding into his rifle's chamber aleviated a small portion of his burden. Lucy, attempting to rise herself, refused. "You and I are leaving. It's too late for him."

"Bullshit it is," he snapped. The uncharacteristic aggression was almost soothing, like a pressure valve being released. "He isn't dying. Not for me. Not again."

"Whatever issues you have, you need to just get over them," Lucy reprimanded. "Zack stayed back to hold off the walkers. He's gone. He did it so that _we_ could escape. If you go back-"

"Then I'm not returning without him. It's as simple as that."

"But you-"

"I know, I fucking know!" he seethed. "I can't die. Well why is that, Lucy? What makes me more important than Tommy and Zack? If it's about Conner, then why the fuck do you care, huh? How in the Hell do you even know him?"

"I care because he's my brother!"

"You mean that you're…" The rest of the words died on his tongue.

"Lucy Bryant." Without warning the woman's hand shot into his coat pocket. The journal was out of his possession within seconds. Trembling, but not with the cold, she held it in front of him. "I saw his name in this. It's him, my brother. I know it."

Tanner grabbed a clump of his hair in self directed rage, nearly yanking it clean of his head as his stupidity bore down on him. "I should have known. I should have goddamn known. I knew you looked familiar the moment I set my eyes on you."

"The family resemblance, huh?" She sniffled. "People always told us we looked like our dad."

"I knew it. I _should_ have known it, but… fuck. Your face, your name, it couldn't be coincidence, but I didn't connect the dots. Shit."

"Come on," she begged. "Please, I have to know where he is. He was with my fiance when everything started. I have to find them!"

"Yeah, Farley. I know." The universe hated him. He was certain of it. He had entertained the thought on so many occasions, but if this wasn't proof then he didn't know what was. It loved to pile on the surprises when things were at their worst. There had to be some higher power out there. Tanner could feel it laughing at him as he was forced to choose between decisions that were all wrong.

Fuck it. He wasn't going to let Zack end up like everyone else he'd met. Not without a fight. "I'm going back. Just get out of here. Don't wait up."

"You can't be serious."

"I am." The tracks they had made were almost gone, erased by the continuing snowfall. "Just take that book," he said, nodding at the journal. "I only read the first entry, but I can tell you that there's going to be some messed up shit in there."

"You're going back? Really?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "I have to."

"But it's fucking suicide! Are you stupid or something? There were hundreds of them back there, and probably hundreds more in the woods all around us."

"I know," he told her. "I can live with it."

"Yeah, great strategy Tanner," she shouted with more than a little sarcasm. "You'll live with committing suicide. I don't know how I didn't see this brilliant plan before."

He stopped, looking back with more resignation than anger or annoyance. "I couldn't live with myself if I let another person die because of me. Back when I knew him, Farley told me something. He said that 'It isn't just about living. It's about being able to live with yourself.' So, yeah. I guess this is probably goodbye." The peaceful acceptance on his face was haunting. "Don't follow me," he cautioned. "Just don't." Before she could protest he vanished into the storm.


	6. (6) Drifting

He found Zack laying in a ditch nearly half a mile back.

The snow had formed a thin layer over the massive man, partially concealing him against the landscape. Dead walkers, truly dead, were scattered around the man, some of them nearly completely encased in the snow.

Then he moved.

Tanner's gun was in his hands within the span of a second. The mound in the snow that was Zack lurched toward him with an outstretched arm, moaning.

His muscles begged him to pull the trigger. Honed by two years of near misses and terrifyingly impossible situations come to life, he'd been told that it was best to pull the trigger first and worry about the fallout later.

But he'd never been that kind of person. Especially after his escape from Lynch and his murderers. The fallout from previous choices he made continued to haunt him even to this day. It was impossible to bring himself to shoot. At least without knowing.

"H-h-help…"

"Oh thank fucking Christ!" he blurted, sprinting over to Zack. The large man was shivering uncontrollably, like an earthquake, and the chattering of his teeth could have drowned out gunfire.

"T-t-tanner? W-what are you d...d-d-doing here?"

"I came back for you, that's what. Can you move?"

"N-no. M-m-my ankle…"

"Please, Zack," Tanner said stooping low to look the prone man in his eyes. "_Please_ tell me you weren't bitten."

He twisted around to glimpse his injury, grunting under his breath. "No," he shivered. "Just… b-broken."

"Then come on," Tanner said, straining against the larger survivor's weight as he pulled him up. "Lean on me. We'll get you out of here."

Zack's hesitation only lasted for a few brief seconds, before he was on his feet with Tanner supporting his weight. "G-gotta go," he struggled. "Walkers. Not far behind…"

"That explosion must have brought them from all over," Tanner surmised. "Guess I wasn't really thinking with that one, huh?"

"It's alright," his companion reassured him. "We'd all be dead without it."

The two began to walk. At least that's what they attempted to do. They hobbled, limped, and stumbled over the snow and ice, following the road as walkers from all around the surrounding forest took notice of the tired men.

Their numbers swelled. A few became a dozen, a dozen became a hundred. The icy blade that was the wind howled through the air, cutting at the men as they made their way down the road. They stumbled frequently as Zack's greater weight began to take its toll on the smaller Tanner. Beaten down by the hostile weather the two continually faltered, giving the dead more than enough time to keep up with them.

It was Hell. Cold and brittle, the wind assaulted them from all sides and on it traveled the screams of the undead. They were out for blood.

"You shouldn't have come back," Zack stated, putting false strength in his voice. "It was stupid."

"No, I had to," Tanner argued, hauling the man another step forward. Through the dark haze of the storm he was able to make out the silhouette of a building. His lungs burned with a fire that could melt the snow around him for miles. Aches in his legs mocked him with every misstep, sending bolts of pain shooting up through his body.

"You're going to die now, too," Zack managed before pitching forward into the snow again. "Just go. Find the Boss."

Tanner heaved, and every muscle in his arms felt like they were shredding under his skin. Much to Zack's reluctance, he was up again. "No," Tanner cursed. "Nobody else dies. Not on my watch." He pulled again, forcing his hesitant companion forward. "I see a building up ahead. We can't keep going. We'll stop there, try to block off the entrances and wait it out."

All Zack could do was nod.

* * *

><p>Safe from the unrelenting storm outside, the hooded drifter's eyes widened with delight as he stared at the car sitting in the middle of the garage. "Holy shit."<p>

The trunk popped open on his first attempt. The contents seemed to glow in the faint aura projected by his lighter. "Oh. My. God." There was fuel. Cans of it stacked neatly on top of each other in the trunk. There was enough for him to go anywhere.

Closing the trunk and rubbing his hands together in delight, he circled the dented blue sedan with his lighter held aloft. The door to the back seat came open with little fuss, and the cargo scattered over the floor made his jaw drop. He was torn between crying and cheering at the bottles of water and cans of food piled in orderly stacks all over the floor and under the seats. There was just so much. No more living off of scraps from day to day, with this he could actually go somewhere without worrying about being able to eat at night.

This. Was. Awesome.

And it just got better. The keys were in the glove box, toward the back and hidden between a walkie talkie labeled "Team 3"and a dusty old CD. The key slid into the ignition and the car lit up with a beautiful purr as the engine started on the first turn. "This is _sick_." The headlights came on, illuminating the interior of the dingy garage. This was it. He was home free.

Until the doors of the garage flew open and a crazy woman with a gun began screaming at him.

"Out of the fucking car!"

The drifter ducked his head, but misjudged how far away the dashboard was. The _thud_ of his head slamming against it threw him back up, and the hood fell back revealing a striped beanie underneath.

"I said out! That's my car!"

"Chill, dude, just chill! I'm not an asshole!" The drifter's hands went up the green eyed woman slowly inched toward the passenger side door.

"Window down."

He complied. "You want my license and registration, too?"

"No time for jokes. Get out."

"Lady, I just found this car and I'm barely getting by. Prove it's yours and I'll get out."

"I don't have time for this shit," she swore as she forced her way into the passenger seat. The AK-47 slung across her back leapt into her hands. "Are you cool?" she asked.

"I'm not just cool," he he responded, "I'm ice cold."

To his surprise, she shoved the handle of her Glock into the palm of his hand. "If we're going to make this work," she informed him, "You have to promise me that you'll never speak again. 'Kay?"

"Harsh. But fair. So what's up?"

"We're going on a rescue mission," she informed him evenly. "Ever wanted to be a hero?"

"You mean, like, some save the day type shit?" he asked, eyes wide with anticipation.

"Exactly," she smiled. "Go in, save the day, the we drive off into the sunset. Followed by cake."

The drifter's foot slammed down on the pedal, sending the sedan shooting out of the garage like a bullet. "So where are we going?"

She pointed down to the end of the road they were on. "Take a left here. We can't see for shit, but just follow the walkers. My people are probably in deep by now."

"Right," he confirmed, taking on a more serious attitude. "Let's do this shit."

The woman next to him flipped the safety of her AK off. "Time to be big damn heroes."

He could feel her fear through the shroud of confidence she put up to mask it. If he weren't preoccupied with his own internal terror he would have given her some reassuring words, but there was no time to deal with their problems now. They had people to save.


	7. (7) In the Desert

The gas station doors were flung inward with a violent kick, the already cracked and frosted glass cracking even more from the blow. Struggling to breathe, the two men lurched forward to the counter sitting directly opposite to the doors they had just entered from.

"Down," Zack gasped, "Put me down here." Tanner let the behemoth down gently against the side of the counter, and his hands immediately went to his ankle as he tried to take in as much oxygen as he could.

"You still can't walk?"

"No," he groaned. "I can't go any further. This is it for me, Tanner."

Tanner knew what was coming next. The cliche "Go on without me," that always came in these situations. That was impossible, though. Even if he had wanted to go, every second the waves of pain and exhaustion wracking his body reminded him that he'd never make it anywhere now. He was just as trapped as Zack. So he would indulge in the other half of the cliche, and say "No, I'm staying with you." If they had backup, then maybe they could make it out. If they weren't surrounded, then maybe. But all signs pointed to their imminent demise. It wasn't the worst way to go, he supposed.

"Maybe I can find something to put in front of the doors," he said before Zack could tell him to leave. He slid the pistol out of Zack's holster and put his hammer on the ground next to him. "If they get in then make those shots count," he ordered.

"You got it, Hero," Zack nodded at the determination in Tanner's eyes. "And thanks for coming back. For all the good it did in the end."

"It's Tanner," he corrected. "And no problem."

The dismal, dilapidated surroundings didn't give off much reassurance. Shelves were knocked over all around the store, creating nearly impassable mounds of debris that the two of them, tired, injured, and trapped, wouldn't have any hope of passing. Blood was smeared on the walls in some places, but it was old. Dark brown and now likely frozen, all that remained of the early days just before the collapse of civilization. The freezer doors had been thrown open and shattered. The various beverages inside had been destroyed, shattered glass from bottles sprinkling the ground like the snow outside. Behind the counter there was a door, with an overturned and empty cash register lying just in front of it. A few seconds of trying the knob revealed it to be locked and neither man had the strength to even think about attempting to kick it down.

"This looks like it," Zack said. The first of the walkers pursuing them had reached the man doors and begun swiping at the glass. "End of the line."

Tanner checked his rifle. Three rounds left. "I guess so," he conceded. The walkers outside grew in number as they attempted to breach the final obstacle between them and the defeated men.

Zack, shifting uncomfortably in his position sitting up against the wall, broke the tension. "Hey Hero, have you ever seen 'The Alamo?'."

Tanner nodded. It had been one of his father's favorite movies while he was growing up. His parents had watched it so many times that the film, a story of ragged, unorganized defenders holding a fort against legions of enemy soldiers, was practically ingrained into his memory. "It's Tanner. And yeah," he said. "I also remember that everyone died in the end."

"That they did," Zack admitted with a mischevious glance at their surroundings. "I'll be John Wayne."

"What?"

"Yeah, I call dibs on John Wayne."

Tanner couldn't suppress his grin. "But I'm the one that came back to save you," he argued. Outside the walkers had swelled in number. "Shouldn't that make _me_ the star?"

"Tough shit," Zack chuckled. "I called dibs."

Laughing it off, Tanner felt a small amount of the fear bearing down on him lift. "I'm starting to regret coming back for you."

"Yeah, _now_ you regret it."

Then the glass doors shattered and a tsunami of death flooded in.

* * *

><p>"That has to be it," the drifter said. A few hundred feet away the two of them could see the besieged gas station and the parking lot in front of it overflowing with walkers.<p>

The woman brushed a few strands of hair out from in front of her eyes. "Either that or they've decided to start having 'Flesh Eaters Anonymous' meetings." There were so many that the people they were looking for had to be in there. They were both sure of it. "You okay?"

"What?"

"I asked if you were alright," the red headed woman repeated, nodding to his hands. Clasped around the steering wheel they were nearly bone white. Even braced against the wheel he could still feel the tremors in his arms. The fear was a paralytic agent in its own right. His hands were glued to the wheel so strongly he couldn't even scratch at the itch in his beard that was beginning to drive him crazy.

"Totally," he lied, fighting back the shortness of breath that was gripping him. "And you?"

"I do this shit all the time," she lied in return, with one shaky hand scavenging the interior of the glove box.

"What are you looking for?" he asked.

"Something to get us psyched up. Here it is."

He was already keyed up. He felt as jacked up as he had when he'd killed his first man on that ominous, foggy night about a month or so after the walkers showed up. The same night everything had gone wrong. "I don't need to get anymore psyched up," he said, shaking. "I need something to mellow out. You got any weed?"

Her hand shot out of the glove box and jammed the CD, labeled "In the Desert," into the car's player. "Sorry, no drugs," she informed him steadily. "So music will have to do."

"So, like, what's your name?" he asked. "I mean, just in case this is it for us I'd like to know who you are."

"I'm Lucy," she told him. "And, well, thanks for helping."

"Anytime," he said. "I'm Eddie."

"Seriously though, you're a good guy," she said thankfully. Giving a last forlorn look down to the gas station she asked the question he had been waiting for. "You ready?"

Eddie swallowed his fear and pressed his foot down on the gas. "Sure. Why not?"

"Then let's tear this shit up," she said with a nod. Wrapping her hand around the volume control, she cranked it up until the rythmic blasting of the music threatened to blow out the vehicles speakers and shatter its icy windows.

He took that as his cue to floor it.

* * *

><p>Tanner's rifle was empty before he realized he'd pulled the trigger. Zack's pistol was inaudible to him as the rush of combat took over, instinct dictating his actions and reactions as he swung the butt of his rifle at the nearest walker.<p>

The weapon's stock splintered, cracking with the same force as the skull of its victim. He hurled the broken rifle forward into the army of walkers bearing down on them as he slipped his hatchet out of his belt loop with his free hand and channeled energy into a downward strike.

The blade slammed through the bone and into the brain of another walker, destroying the creature for good. He barely had energy to yell as he launched into a series of sloppy and uncoordinated slashes at the walkers bearing down on him. He wasn't even tired anymore. His body was just shutting down from the exertion, without even the power for his arms to tremble. On his last leg, he gave a final ineffective slash at a walker. The hatchet managed to take off its jaw with a wet slice before he stumbled back and braced himself against the stained, freezing counter for the end to come.

But it didn't come. Instead the door behind the counter crashed open, the moldy frame failing to keep hold of the hinges and sending the object flying to the side as a woman with an AK-47 stepped through, leveled her weapon, and held down the trigger.

"The car's out back!"

Lucy's weapon spewed lead like a hose. The deadly projectiles whistled as they pounded the herd into a temporary state of immobility as they tripped over newly severed limbs and wandered into the path of her bullets.

The tiny storage room Lucy had entered through was narrow enough to keep them from running side by side. Zack was a force of nature. Shelves and boxes flew into the air as the giant rushed through the storage area like a tornado. Nothing could stand in his way and survive his one man stampede to freedom.

The car, a crummy sedan with faded blue paint, sat mere feet away as the two weary men burst forth from the gas station. A man Tanner had never seen leaned out the driver's side door with a pistol and fired wildly as the horde closed in around them. "Over here, dudes!" Zack dove headfirst into the backseat. Tanner was on his heels. They scrambled for purchase in the vehicle as the driver covered them, his piercings glinting with each flash of the gun.

Amid the blaring music, gunfire, and howling of the blizzard winds the three men saw Lucy emerge from the back door. She backed toward them in a calm, concentrated manner. Her weapon kept bellowing its deadly message into the gathering of undeath all around them. Their driver set the vehicle to "Drive" barely a second before Lucy fell into the passenger's seat.

Zack shoved his head past the shoulder of the driver's seat. "Drive, fucking drive!"

The car squealed out of the parking and through a group of walkers, crushing them beneath its wheels and letting off the unwelcome scent of burning rubber. Tanner watched through the back window as the walkers, denied their prey, stumbled in the direction of their car as it sped down the snowy highway and into the unknown. Breath refused to come to him as he collapsed into the seat, muttered a hoarse "Holy shit," and passed out for the second time that night.


	8. (8) Unmasked

The radio station was well past its prime. A thin coat of dust had accumulated over the equipment, much of which was in an extreme state of disrepair. The single level building was equal parts studio and living space. The owner, whoever he was, had used this place as his home as well as his workplace during the days before the end came.

They had found the deceased owner sitting in his seat in front of the recording equipment, leaning to the side with a gun clutched in his withered, bloody hand. It was a scene that all of them had stumbled over at least once in the years since the dead rose. Thankfully the weather outside had died down from the Ragnarok levels of earlier that night. They had dragged the owner's body outside and laid it next to the crushed skeleton of the station's broadcasting tower, now little more than a heap of scrap next to the building. Now they sat around a small fire fueled by the bits of debris that were in the vicinity as the wind outside the walls was barely a whisper now. Tanner, still unconscious, had been placed next to the fire with a blanket to keep him warm until he woke up. Lucy was on "watch," or so she claimed, patrolling the perimeter with her assault rifle. Though he hadn't said anything to Zack, he'd seen her walk out with that journal she had mentioned to him pressed against her chest. It was probably better for her to be alone while she read it. After all, what harm could it do?

Zack and the group's newest member were getting acquainted. "I don't think I ever caught your name," he said, putting his hand forward. "I'm Zack."

"Cool name, man," the drifter answered, shaking his hand. "I'm Eddie."

"Nice to meet you," Zack said. "And thanks for the save back there. Hero and I thought we were done for."

Eddie unconsciously scratched at his ragged beard. "Hero?"

"Oh, yeah, you don't know."

"You're right, I don't. Hence the question."

Zack sliced open one of the cans from their car, revealing its contents to be cheap ravioli. "I give people nicknames sometimes." He pointed his plastic spoon toward Tanner. "That guy there? We only met him an hour or two before you and the Boss saved our asses. He came back for me through half a mile of this blizzard, alone, and practically carried me to that gas station."

"Jesus," Eddie gasped. His eyes, flooded with disbelief, fell over Tanner's shivering body. "That guy? Seriously?"

"Yeah," Zack said through a mouthful of food. "I can hardly believe it myself. Hence the nickname 'Hero.'"

"Holy shit, that is hardcore." Eddie took a drink from one of the water bottles. "So what's my nickname?"

"Your nickname?"

"Yeah, my nickname."

Zack pondered an appropriate title for the man. Looking him over a few things stood out. The striped beanie he usually wore, but was now in his lap. His unkempt dark hair, his piercings. His laid back attitude and voice. All things he was familiar with. He'd interacted with a lot of people like Eddie, or at least that reminded him of Eddie, before the world ended. "How about…"

Eddie looked at him expectantly, face wreathed in anticipation.

"...Stoner."

For a long time Eddie was silent, leaning his back against the wall while he sipped his water with a glint of thoughtfulness in his eyes as he mulled the name over. Setting the water down he leaned forward again in the low light of the radio station. "I like it."

"You do?" Zack asked. "You're sure?"

"Totally," Eddie smiled. "You know I actually did used to get high?"

"I've seen the look before," Zack nodded. "Plenty of times. I thought as much."

"Yeah, me and my buddies TJ and Wyatt would spend our weekends getting wasted with this weed we got from some guy called Tiny Carlos."

Chuckling, Zack set his empty can down. "Tiny Carlos? Really, that was his name?"

"Dude, you do _not_ want to laugh at that," Eddie warned him. "Tiny Carlos was, like, a _really_ angry guy. You did not want to fuck with him."

"Well, with a name like _Tiny…_"

"Seriously bro," Eddie said. "Wyatt told me he cut some guy's ear off with a pocket knife once for holding out on him."

"For weed?" Zack, suitably unimpressed, stood up. "Must have been one of those small town drug dealers then, trying to seem bigger and tougher than they actually were by acting crazy. I've seen worse," he mentioned offhand.

"Yeah, but I'm talking about before everything went to shit," Eddie told him.

Zack stepped toward the door. "So was I."

"Oh." Before Zack could leave the room Eddie stopped him. "What are we doing? Like, do we have a destination or something? Because you guys have a lot of supplies."

"We don't have enough. Not nearly enough," Zack sighed. "You and Tanner got lucky though. Since Allen and Tommy are dead, you two are free to come with us up North."

"Allen and Tommy?"

Zack felt his throat close up. "Later," he choked out, trying to keep his sorrow in check. "Just trust me when I say that you're a lot better sticking with us than going back out on your own."

The big man turned back to the door without seeing Eddie sit back down, and noticed something curious. There was a wallet on the ground, made out of dark leather with a few dull scratches marked over the surface. Stooping down and picking it up, it was almost immediately obvious that the wallet was different than the rest of their surroundings. It wasn't dusty or torn. It was a new arrival to the radio station. Much like they were. So he opened it up and, finding a driver's license inside, pulled it out and examined it.

It was Tanner's. At least, it should have been. It was a Georgia driver's license with Tanner's picture prominently displayed. It had his address from before the apocalypse, some crummy apartment in the city of Dawson, Georgia. It had his sex, male, his height, 5 feet 10 inches, and his eye color. His date of birth, January 12, 1972. Everything appeared to be in order except for one glaring flaw.

The name on the license read "Jack Weller."

"Hey Stoner, mind doing me a favor?" Zack slipped the license into his pocket with an ounce of trepidation.

"Sure. What's up, man?"

"Could you go keep a close eye on our friend while I go find the Boss? I don't want anything to happen."

"No problem." Eddie, curious, noticed the wallet. "What's that?"

"I'll explain when I get back here with the Boss. But if he wakes up, don't let him go anywhere. He's got some explaining to do."


	9. (9) In Darkness

Zack's voice echoed through the foggy pain that encased Tanner's mind. "Evening. Finally awake?"

"Oh God… what happened?" The thin blanket fell off as he struggled to sit upright. The first thing that he noticed was the silence. It was an eerie, almost unnatural sensation almost like the world had just stopped. The wind was gone, or at least inaudible. The void created by its absence was massive. It had been a constant since even before he had found Beth and Conner at the riverbank, acting as a harsh backdrop for his actions and struggles. The two windows in the room, what looked to be a recording studio of sorts, still showed snow wafting sluggishly down to earth against the pure blackness of true night. His surroundings were unfamiliar and foreign, brought into the realm of light only by the errant dancing of the campfire's flames.

Lucy and Eddie were lounging around at the studio's door. Zack sat on the other side of the fire, waiting patiently. "You passed out when we got into the car," Zack informed him. "We set up camp in this radio station for the night. I carried you inside."

"Oh," he moaned. "Well thanks."

"Alright Tanner. Let's get this out of the way now. Is there anything you want to say?"

"What?"

"You heard me. Anything you feel that I should know, _Tanner_?" Tanner unconsciously twitched at the emphasis given to his name.

He couldn't find the power to speak. A dark cloud hung low over his head, cutting off any attempts to speak as the giant stared him down. Meeting Zack's eyes with his own was a struggle in itself as a voice whispered in his ear that the already unsettling scene was about to get worse.

They stared for what seemed like hours with Zack's cool eyes reaching out and attempting to pry… _something_ out of Tanner. He sensed that it was something he would rather keep to himself.

Zack reached down, keeping his eyes on Tanner. "Fine." His hand came up with a dark leather wallet held for Tanner to see. He recognized it instantly. It was his.

Tanner said nothing.

Zack tossed the wallet over the fire to Tanner, dropping his voice to an earthy rumble. "Just remember that I gave you a chance to come clean, _Jack_."

The verbal hammerblow impacted his guts with a quaking force. His throat seized up, cutting off his breath as the world began to spin around him. Drops of sweat formed on his forehead even though it was the dead of winter. His attempt to pick up the wallet failed when his arms, shaking, let go as if of their own accord just when a wave of heat embraced him and turned his skin red. Stuttering, unstable, he wasn't able to speak so much as let random words spill forth in flimsy attempts to explain away a name that, to him, was almost as evil as Lynch.

Zack looked on at Tanner's struggling from his seat a few feet in front of him. "So _Jack_, can you tell me, exactly, what's going on?"

"Why, why, why me?"

"Why what, Jack?"

"He's doing it again, oh Christ, he won't let me go." He screamed in his head. That mental voice that was always whispering over his shoulder gave out a tremendous, bloodcurdling yelp. Tanner could hear Lynch, that murderer, that psychopath, he could hear his black laughter slither up from the deepest, darkest pit of Hell. All spite, all hate, pure evil. He knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lynch's spectre would haunt him for the rest of his days. He would never be free.

His breathing was still out of his control. Through the dizziness he managed to grab his wallet and stand, swaying on fragile legs with Lynch's mad cackling trying to beat him back down. "I'll… I'll just… go, okay? I can-"

"You can sit," Zack grumbled. "You can sit, and shut up, and tell me what's going on. We lay our cards on the table. No more secrets. From any of us. Okay?" Tanner obeyed, his muscles turning into one massive knot of tension.

"But I can still go-"

"No." Lucy's voice, constricting, coiled around his heart. "You're staying and you're talking. No. More. Lies. Who are you for real, and what the fuck happened to my family?" Her hand dropped to her holster and rested snugly on the grip of her pistol. "No more bullshit."

In a jittery, uneven voice he stumbled through the story while Zack and Lucy's cutting stares tore at him. Eddie simply stood there, watching it all unfold before him. "I was part of this group. In the early days. A militia that tried to fight the walkers." Zack nodded. "I was just some random electrician that got recruited when the dead came back. Our leader, a guy named Daniel Lynch, knew we needed as many people as we could get if we wanted to beat the walkers so he ordered us to… 'draft' them into our little army."

"Go on, Jack."

The panic was gone now. It had disappeared along with the wind. In its place was nothing but a deep seeded, brooding depression as his story flowed like a gloomy river. "He was insane. He wanted us to take back a city from them. Dawson, Georgia. After we lost so many people trying to hold it in the first weeks."

"And you helped him?" Zack asked.

Tanner's nod was almost invisible. "Yeah. I stood by for over two months and let him and his killers enslave survivors and force them out on a suicide mission. Families, kids, the old, anyone that could use a gun."

Lucy stepped forward."Did they do that to Conner? What about Farley?"

"No," he said, despondent. "When I stood up to them they killed this family I was trying to help, and then they almost killed me. I met Conner and Farley a few weeks later. They were in another group, so I gave myself another name."

Nodding, Zack slid the shotgun off his lap and away from him. "Tanner."

"Yeah. I stopped being 'Jack Weller.' Jack stood by and let all of those people be 'drafted' into a lost cause because he was too afraid to do anything. I didn't want to be him anymore. I couldn't be that person."

"I don't care!" Lucy snapped. "What happened to Conner? Tell me what happened!"

The melancholy was overwhelming as Tanner went on. "I never told them about Lynch. Everything was fine for a long time, and then it all went wrong."

Zack spoke before Lucy could continue shouting. "This 'Lynch' guy found you?"

Tanner nodded. "When I left, I killed Dan Lynch's brother, Robert. He wanted revenge on me, so he tracked me for months. I didn't think he'd go so far to find me again. Lynch and everyone still with him had gone bandit by then."

Zack's eyes glowed with understanding as it began to fall into place before him. By the door Lucy was pacing back and forth, frantically turning the journal over and over in her hands. "And you blame yourself for that?" The large man asked.

He didn't bother answering. "We managed to take Lynch down, but not before our entire group was wiped out. Farley didn't make it." Lucy stopped pacing. She had become a statue, frozen to to the floor. "Not many of us did. Conner managed to survive, but he was different. I could see it just before we attacked Lynch and finished him off."

Lucy was still frozen as Zack spoke. "And you spent the last year searching for him?"

"Yes," Tanner said, at the verge of breaking down. "I found him, too."

Lucy moved again, turning back to Tanner. "No."

"Down by the river."

"Tanner, stop." Her voice quavered.

"Barely an hour or two before I met you guys."

"No. No no no no no, you're lying again." Her green eyes became watery. "You have to be lying. It's what you do."

"Lucy, I'm sorry."

"Not true, not true, it's not true."

All Tanner could do was look away. It broke her.

Tears dripped ever so slowly as she stormed out of the room and cast the journal aside with a backwards, red faced sneer directed at Tanner.

Eddie slipped through the door after her.

* * *

><p>She seethed. Everything was red.<p>

The bleak, dank hallways around her blurred into a single featureless background as she ripped at her hair from the depths of grief. The memories of her childhood, the one that she shared with Conner and Farley, were burning up. She could feel them transform and disintegrate into ash as she drowned in a sea of regret and loneliness. Her veins flowed with a raging inferno, boiling her blood as she clawed at her surroundings for something, anything, to grab on to as she sunk deeper and deeper into madness born of sorrow.

She should have found them. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Nothing was right anymore. Everything she'd done had been for nothing. Her trek north from Statesboro looking for the two of them. Finding Wellington. Volunteering to join the Team to go back out and look for them while they should have been gathering supplies for the community.

The stupid risks she'd taken, all the times she'd almost died, all of it meant exactly nothing. Nothing. That was all she had left.

That piece of shit sitting by their fire in the room at the end of the hallway. That liar. That killer. He'd taken her family away from her.

Her hand slipped her gun out of its holster automatically, flipping the safety off in the same moment she stepped back toward the door at the end of the hallway.

Tanner, or Jack, or Fuckface, or whatever the Hell his name really was had robbed her of her family. Now she was going to take away everything from him.

From some place far away she heard Eddie call her name, but his voice was drowned out as everything around her turned black. It all vanished against her rage, disappearing into the sea of darkness she was drowning in. Before she submerged completely she was going to wrap her hands around that lying bastards neck and drag him down with her.

All she could see now was a tunnel. Wisps of red revealed themselves at the end of the black tunnel. Embers from the fire drifting away from their camp, taunting her with their soft, warm glowing each time she took an uneasy step.

"Lucy, stop!" Frantic, concerned, Eddie's voice pierced the veil like a razor. "Don't do it! Stop!"

She kept walking. Her fingers tightened around the gun until the grip threatened to crack.

"Please! Don't!"

Words were useless. She wouldn't be stopped by a stupid pot head with a shitty beanie. Not when she was so close. The end of the tunnel was in her reach. All she had to do was lean through the doorway, take aim, and pull the trigger. Then her brother and her fiance could finally rest.

Filled with a trepid determination, Eddie emerged from the edge of the darkness and stood in front of the door.

"_Move."_ Her voice had forgotten the sarcastic, joking personality that she usually wore. All that remained was a fatal, deep seeded hatred that stretched its dark roots down into her soul.

"I'm not letting you do this," he trembled, crossing his arms. His feet were planted as surely as a statue's. Lucy's gun came up in a single, solid motion.

"I will end you," she growled, "If you don't move out of the way. He dies. Now."

He refused to budge. Terror shone in his eyes as he stared down the barrel of her gun, sensing the bullet resting in the chamber and waiting to be unleashed. But he stood there, shielding the door with an unwavering courage even as she put her finger on the trigger. "Listen," he asked with a high strung shrillness that betrayed his inner fear, "You're not a murderer. Lucy, this won't solve anything."

"This is _justice_," the woman hissed with a serpent-like rasp. "My brother? My fiance? That shitstain in there killed them with his lies." The gun began to sway. "Th-they're dead. I have nothing."

"He spent a year looking for your brother," he told her. "He saved Zack's life."

"He… he… I have nothing left, Eddie." Her vision blurred again, this time with tears instead of rage.

He inched forward, pleading with her. "Would they want you to kill him like this? Would they want you to be a murderer?"

"I've killed before," she sobbed. "I'll do it again. I'll do it."

"We've all killed," he reminded her with a whisper. "But you're not a murderer. And whatever happened to your family, they wouldn't want you to become one for them. Just… steady now… put it down…"

She charged. The gun slipped from her hand, clattering to the floor as she tried to run past him. He stepped into her path and the two collided, her tidal wave of grief smashing against his steadfast mountain of bravery.

It was enough. She collapsed against his chest, burying her face into his jacket as her stinging tears flowed freely from her eyes. She brought her fists down on his chest over and over, letting the rage and sadness filter out of her with each strike. Eddie stood there, silently enduring the blows as Lucy wept for the first time in years.

* * *

><p>Tanner stood, intending to follow Eddie, but Zack pulled him back down.<p>

"He might need help. Let me go, Zack."

"The last thing she needs is to see you right now," Zack told him. "Now sit down."

"This is my fault," Tanner insisted, standing again. "I'm going with him."

Exasperated, Zack grabbed Tanner's arm. "Do you know what she could do? You just told her you got her family killed. If she sees you now, she might decide to kill _you_."

Tanner tried to steal his arm back, meeting with failure as Zack kept a firm hold. "I don't care," he said. "It's what I deserve, isn't it? I'm the liar. I'm the bad guy. All of this is my fault."

"You're really just going to let her kill you? Like you think that somehow that'll make it all right?"

"What else is there?" he asked. "You don't know how it feels, Zack. I'll never be free from this as long as I'm alive."

"You think I don't know how it feels to ruin lives?" he challenged, voice tempered with anger. "I don't suppose you ever heard of Zackary Grant, then?"

Tanner shook his head, confused.

"That's right, you probably didn't hear of me in that small, backwoods town you lived in," he spat before suppressing his temper with a glare fixed on Tanner. "In Atlanta, though? Almost half the city knew who I was. They heard the name 'Zack Grant' and they always knew what that meant."

He hadn't expected this. "What did it mean?" Tanner's voice was still soft and injured as he asked the question, but he could feel the dynamic between Zack and himself shifting.

"It meant drugs," Zack said. "Almost any kind you could think of. All over downtown I sold whatever kind you needed, no questions asked, for however much I felt like charging that day. By the time the cops finally caught me I had to have had nearly twenty regular customers. Every single one of them hooked on my stuff and high as the sky. They were giving me their paychecks, credit cards, life savings, whatever money they had for just one more fix to keep that high going as long as they could. And I let them."

"You were arrested?" Tanner had managed to conquer the quivering of his voice.

"I did four years in West Central Prison. Dealt a few more drugs, got a few inmates hooked, but the guards never found out about it so I got to get out on parole early. 'Good behavior' they told me. I was ready to go back to my corner and start dealing again. Then, well, I'm sure you know what happened."

"The walkers came."

"Yeah." The regret was there. Tanner could see it if he looked close enough, but Zack was doing an excellent job of hiding it. "I didn't check in with my Parole Officer, I just hauled ass out of Atlanta. And on the outskirts of the city I met her."

"Lucy?"

"No, not Lucy," Zack said, shaking his head. "One of my customers. A regular. She had this nice orange hair and these cute freckles on her face. And she had one of those really noticeable southern accents." He smiled with the memory before looking down, shameful.

"Anyway," he continued, "She was just so… hooked. You could see how badly the drugs had messed her up on her face, and her arms had track marks and scars all over them. Atlanta was burning down less than a mile behind us. We could see the fire and we could even still hear people screaming, but she ignored it. She just grabbed my shirt and broke down begging for another fix. She was _crying_ because she couldn't pay me for another syringe, promising me that she'd get me the money as soon as she could if I just gave her the juice _now_ so that everything would be alright."

"That's, uh… that's… what did you do?"

"I wish I could say that I told her it didn't matter, that I took her with me and helped her get clean. But, and this is the part that I'll take to my grave, I just ran away." Hands clasped he carried on with the story in a somber, defeated tone. "I left her there. That was the moment I realized just what I had been doing on that street corner. I was ruining lives. The world was literally ending around her, but she didn't care. Seeing her like that is what finally made me see, but I couldn't deal with it. It was like looking all of my sins in the eye, and I flinched." His voice dropped and he cast his gaze over the floor at his feet. "Those people I dealt to, I let them give away everything they had in exchange for poison. It took the apocalypse to get me to realize that."

"That's why I volunteered to go on these long range supply runs with the Boss instead of sitting behind those metal walls up North. It's why I stayed behind after the bridge exploded to give her enough time to drag you to safety." He looked back up and pointed at Tanner. "I did those things for the same reason you came back for me when any sensible person would have given me up for dead. And it's the same reason you want to follow the Boss and let her shoot you dead."

"For atonement," Tanner grasped.

"Yeah," Zack told him. "Atonement. Forgiveness. Redemption. Call it whatever you want. For people like you and me, searching for it is the only thing that stops the past from eating up our insides until we're just hollow shells."

Zack's explanation rang true. Sapped of his emotional energy, all Tanner could do was offer a meek acknowledgement before gathering up what little power he had left to voice a single thought. "Will it ever be enough?"

"I have no idea," Zack admitted. "I've asked myself that question so many times and I just don't know. But let's make a deal, Tanner."

His tone was still sinking. "What kind of a deal?"

"You and me? We keep at it. We keep trying our best so that one day, maybe, we can look at ourselves in the mirror without having to turn away. Deal?"

From the hallway the two heard something fall to the floor. A few seconds later the air was permeated with violent, muffled sobbing.

"Deal," Tanner croaked.


	10. (10) Salvation

5 Days Later

The walkie talkie crackled with a burst of life inducing static in Lucy's hands. Sullenly she pressed down on the button. "This is Team 3, we're ten minutes out."

The voice on the other end, male, old, was surprised. "Lucy? Is that you?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "Just get everything ready for us. Some shit went down."

The voice on the other end paused as if unsure what to say. "Are you okay?"

"Fine."

"Are you sure?" the voice asked. "Something sounds off."

"Just get it ready for us," she sneered before turning the radio off.

In the back seat Tanner was slumped against the window, watching the landscape fly by while Eddie spoke.

"So what's this 'Wellington' place like?" he asked. "It's like some, like, community or something?"

"Yeah," Zack answered. Lucy just drew herself further away from the others as her friend spoke. "A big community. In fact, we're at capacity right now. But you two got lucky because we've got two open spots."

"What do you mean 'open spots'" Eddie pondered. "You guys aren't, like, totally cannibals or anything, right? Like luring people in and eating them and shit?"

"Stoner, you're high right now, are you? That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard."

"Alright, then why are there suddenly open spots for us?"

Zack's tone dropped all pretense of happiness. "Before we met you two, there were others in our group. A pair of brothers by the names of Allen and Tommy."

Eddie didn't take long to draw his conclusions. "And they're, uh…"

"Yeah," Zack said. They are."

"Shit, I'm sorry, man."

"No, it's alright. Not your fault."

"What happened?"

"I wasn't there," Zack recounted. "It was a little over a week before we met you two, and I was guarding the car at the time, but the Boss told me about it when she and Tommy got back. Apparently there was this big fishing cabin in the woods a few miles from the bridge-"

"Bridge? What bridge?" Eddie asked. "I don't remember any bridge."

"Just let me tell the story, okay?" Eddie nodded and let Zack continue. "Anyway, the door was broken down and there were these four people inside that were looking for something. Three of them had AK-47s." Tanner, unconsciously, perked up at the mention of AK-47s. Conner, Beth, and their group had been lit up by automatic weapons. "Allen, Tommy, and the Boss approached the cabin. They said that this old guy with a revolver asked them about this other group. Then they opened fire on them. Allen got hit and he didn't make it."

From the passenger seat Lucy's voice growled out at them. Her breath came heavier and heavier as she talked, attempting to hold her rage. "This motherfucker. This asshole, in some stupid camo jacket, he just walked up to Allen while he was on the ground and put his gun to his head while Tommy and I ran." She slammed her fist against the car window. "Fuck."

"You said they had AK-47s?" Tanner clarified. "When I found-" Lucy turned with a glare that could melt steel. "...when I found the river," Tanner said, avoiding Conner's name, "The bodies had been shot up by automatic weapons. I think the people you met were the ones that… well, you know. Shot up those people at the river."

Lucy, enraged, tossed the walkie talkie at the dashboard. "I fucking _knew_ it!" the woman seethed. Her green eyes had taken on a fire as deep as the color of her hair. "As soon as we saw those assholes I _knew_ they were murderers. We should have killed them. Killed them slow…"

"Calm down, Boss," Zack comforted. "You couldn't have known."

"Allen told us to run so we ran. But God help me, if I _ever_ find any one of those inbred degenerate _fucks_ again, I will end them."

Her rage visibly startled everyone in the car. "Don't worry," Tanner told her in an attempt to calm her down, "People like that get what's coming to them eventually. I'm sure he'll wish you'd killed him once everything catches up to him."

"Whatever," she shrugged, going back to her silent place away from the rest of them. The heatwave of her simmering anger was overwhelming.

"So you guys have lots of people here," Eddie said, changing the subject. "Right?"

"Yeah. Since we're at capacity, we've actually had to start turning survivors away. So the community got together and formed these teams, like ours, that go out on long range scavenging missions to try and find suitable sources of supplies. They're usually made of three or four people who volunteered. Our Team, Team 3, is led by Lucy. We were on our way down to the Gulf when we ran into those assholes at the cabin."

"Cool, cool," he nodded. "You wouldn't happen to have anyone with glasses there, would you? Perhaps someone of the bearded, chubby persuasion?"

"Guys," Lucy said. Her voice was still low and dark, but a faint chuckle rattled from her lips. "I think we've found Eddie's 'type.'"

"Was that a joke?" he asked, looking back to Zack. "I think she just made a joke."

She turned back to the window. "Shut up."

"Jokes aside," Zack stated, veering back toward the topic of Wellington, "You and Hero should get yourselves ready for some scrutiny. Since we're bringing you two back instead of Allen and Tommy, McKay is going to extra tough on you guys."

For the first time since their ride began, Tanner looked away from the window. "McKay?"

"Yeah, he's in charge of the Teams," Zack said. "Our boss. A real tough guy."

"The original badass," Lucy chimed in morosely.

"Plus we've got Elliot on gate duty today," Zack moaned. "He's pretty annoying and he gets mad pretty fast, so just try and relax around him if he starts going off. If we were lucky we'd be arriving tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?"

Lucy sat upright again, and the pain in her voice receded slightly. "Tomorrow is when Edith starts her week on gate duty."

"Boss, don't start this," Zack requested with annoyance. "Please."

"Ok, fine," she pretended to relent. "These guys won't find out about your crush from me."

"There is no _crush_, damnit."

"Then I guess you memorized her guard duty schedule out of concern, right?" Zack, stammering for a response, was cut off by Lucy turning her head to face the back seat. "Zack memorizes her schedule so he can 'accidentally' bump into her on her way to her post and the two can chat."

"Dude, really?" Eddie snickered. "That is so Middle School."

Lucy brought her hand over her mouth to conceal her giggling. "I think it's kind of cute, really. In a childish way."

Zack's face couldn't have been more red as muttered a feeble "Stop," just as the car rolled up to the gates.

The walls of Wellington were made with steel sheets meticulously connected and interlocked to make them as impregnable as possible against walkers. The gate itself was fashioned out of a series of large, multicolored shipping containers, several of which read "Wellington Global Shipping Company" in attention grabbing white letters. In the guard post over the gates a person appeared. Young, younger even than Tommy, Tanner guessed him to be near Riley's age as the four of them stepped out of the vehicle and the kid waved down at them.

"Hey Lucy, Zack," he shouted down. "McKay said that something happened With Tommy and Allen? They okay?"

"Elliot, please," Zack asked, "Some really, _really_ bad things happened out there. Let us in so we can talk to McKay first, alright?"

"Seriously, Zack, where are they? Allen and I were planning on playing some cards when he got back."

All Zack could do was shake his head.

Elliot wiped away something that was in his eye before turning back to the settlement with a hoarse shout. "They're back. Open the gates and bring them to McKay."

The red steel doors of the shipping container swung open and from the looming darkness stepped a pair of guards with rifles held at their sides, beckoning to the four with a wave to come inside.

Tanner couldn't bring himself to step forward. The gate was ominous, but more than that it was a true salvation. The high steel walls, the guards, the resources, all of it screamed one thing to him. _Safety._

A safety he didn't deserve. In the end he was still responsible for all the bad things that had befallen his friends. Accepting the safety of Wellington now felt like more of a betrayal than an ending after he had gotten so many people killed in order to get this far. He couldn't step forward. He wouldn't.

But nothing was ever that easy. "Tanner," Zack said, taking a step back toward him, "Come on."

"No."

"No? The Hell do you mean?"

"I mean no, Zack," he said with a backward step. "I'm not going in there. I can't."

Zack grunted wearily, bringing his hand up to his forehead. Lucy and Eddie stood on the threshold of the community, expectant, as Zack said what he needed to say. "Suck it up."

"What?"

"You heard me" he stated flatly. "Stop crying about it. This 'I'm a bad person' bullshit can only go so far. Now walk through the damn gate."

Taken aback, it was several moments before he could stammer out a subdued response. "Zack, all of the people I got killed just don't go away. Why do I get to be safe after everything I've done?"

"Because we had a deal," the overbearing man told him. "This isn't a chance for you to be safe, Tanner. This is a chance for you to make up for all of those bad things you're responsible for."

His resistance waning, he gave a final half hearted attempt at denying himself the haven stretched out before him. "If Tommy and Allen weren't dead I wouldn't be coming in. You said it yourself, Wellington is at capacity. If I walk through those gates it'll be over their corpses."

Zack, exasperated, tugged at his ponytail in annoyance. "Then make it right. This community is yours as much as it was theirs, and it needs help. There has to be someone out there collecting supplies in the Badlands. It's dangerous and hard but it needs to be done. Don't turn your back on a chance to make everything right because your guilt is controlling you." He stooped slightly, bringing his eyes in line with Tanner's. "You can never forget the things that you did, and you can never let them go, but you can't let them control you, either. Trust me," he pleaded, putting his large arms on Tanner's shoulders in a brotherly gesture, "I know. Now walk through those gates and help us save this place."

His voice, lighter than a feather on the breeze, squeaked as Wellington's shadow engulfed him in the sunset. "What if it isn't enough?"

"It will be, Hero. You're responsible for some bad stuff, but you're not as bad as you think. Now that Tommy and Allen are gone, Lucy and I need you. You're part of the team now. Don't walk away from this."

Tanner sniffled. "I guess I have to try, don't I?" Grinning, Zack gave him a hearty pat on the back as Tanner put one foot in front of the other and stepped over the threshold. A cold wind blew at his back, lifting the burden off of his shoulders for the first time in years as he stepped into the community alongside his family. The lightness was ecstasy in its purest form. It was… incredible. This lightness lifting his soul was as alien to him now as walking corpses had been in a life that had ended years ago. It was the sweetest sensation he could have imagined, like a bird spreading its wings and taking flight after years of being caged.

"You'll do just fine, Tanner," Zack assured him, more like a brother than a friend, over the noise of the gates closing behind them. "We'll do just fine."


	11. Epilogue

2 Weeks Later

The sun was setting over Wellington again, throwing orange rays of dying light at the community from just over the snowy horizon. It was a pleasant view. Peaceful. A feeling that Tanner had grown divorced from in the past, but it was back. A lot of feelings were coming back. Just the other day he'd caught himself laughing when Eddie told him about the "Special plants" he was growing behind Wellington's greenhouse. A general feeling of levity was almost always present with him now. It was strange at first, it still was, but he was growing accustomed to it.

His patrol of the wall had ended several hours ago, but he'd found himself drawn back to them once the sun began to swing low. He'd seen plenty of sunsets during his days on the outside of the walls, but they had never had that sense of tranquility that they did now.

"Yo, Tanner! Wait up, man, there's someone I want to introduce you to!" Reluctantly tearing his attention away from the horizon and back to the wall. Eddie was running up to him, but strangely enough he was missing his trademark beanie. Instead of his usual headwear, a normal hat was resting on his head. The color scheme was white and dark blue, with a large "D" embroidered into the white colored front of the hat. "Dude," he panted, coming to a stop a few feet away, "I just met, like, the coolest kid ever. Of all time." He turned around. "It's okay, come here. He won't hurt you."

She appeared from behind Eddie as silently as if she hadn't been there at all. She was a little girl, about 11 years old, wearing a rainbow jacket with her hair tied up into tiny pigtails. Eddie's beanie rested snugly on her head as she clasped her hands in front of her in an uncomfortable manner and swayed back and forth with an adorable shyness. A bandage was wrapped around her shoulder, soaked through with a light red.

"Hi," she chirped, putting an awkward hand up. Tanner reciprocated the gesture and knelt to one knee.

"Hi yourself. What happened here?" he asked, pointing at the frayed gauze covering her wound.

She backed up a small step, refusing to speak and opting to let Eddie do it for her. "Her name's 'Clementine.' Pretty sweet, right?"

"Yeah. Cool. Cooler than my name." He stretched his hand out. "I'm Tanner. It's nice to meet you, Clementine." She took his hand and gave it a single meek shake. "You like Eddie's hat?"

"Yeah, kinda. It's a little itchy, though."

Eddie lifted it from her head and set her own hat back where it belonged. "You get used to it," he told her. "Besides, your hat is way awesomer than mine."

"Thanks," she blushed.

"Want to make it even _more_ awesome?"

"How?"

"Like this." Reaching down, he took hold of her hat and finished his adjustments in seconds. "There."

Clementine began shuffling again. "Are you sure? I don't feel any different."

"Trust me, this is awesome. Right Tanner?"

"Eddie," he sighed, "All you did was turn her hat backwards."

"Yeah, I know. Isn't it great?"

Feebly turning the hat back to its original position, Clem looked down. "I like it better normal."

"That's okay," Eddie shrugged. "It's a nice hat anyway."

"C-can I have it back now?" she said. "Please?"

"Oh, totally. I almost forgot." Donning his beanie again, Eddie's hand vanished into the depths of one of his coat pockets and came out holding an old, worn watch. "Here you go."

Clementine took it and secured it in the pocket of her own jacket. "Thank you," she said her face lighting up with a sorrowfully tinged happiness. "This means a lot to me."

"Hey, don't mention it. I was happy to do it." A shout pierced the trio's concentration and Eddie looked up, almost sad. "I guess it's time to say goodbye."

Just as Tanner was about to ask, a young woman jogged up to them, face wreathed in relief. "Clem, you didn't tell me where you were going."

"Sorry Edith," she apologized. "Eddie was just helping me with the watch. He fixed it for me."

"Really?" Her look to Eddie was one of approval. "Thank you. She dropped it on her third day here. We never thought it would work again."

"Hey, it's what I do," Eddie told her. "My uncle fixed watches for a living, so I picked up a thing or two in my teens. It was nothing, really."

"You're one of Zack's friends, right?" Edith inquired. "He and I just got done talking."

"Is that so?" Eddie smirked.

"Yeah. It's weird, almost," she confessed. "It's like I run into him every day on the way back from my duties."

Tanner looked away to conceal his grin. "Yeah, weird," he said. "Anyway, I'll see you two around. It was nice meeting you, Clementine."

The two girls walked away, with Clementine clinging to Edith like a child to her mother. "She's pretty hardcore for an 11 year old," Eddie said. "That bandage? Apparently someone shot her."

"What?" Shocked, Tanner looked back at the two as they drew further away. "Someone fucking shot a kid? When?"

"It was when she was still on the outside. She arrived a few days after we did with a baby and some pirate guy who got turned away."

"Eddie," Tanner said with drawn out weariness, "That doesn't make sense."

"No man, Edith was on gate duty at the time. Clem showed up with a baby and some dude with a huge beard and an eyepatch. He even had a hat. I'm telling you man, total pirate. I bet he had a peg leg or something that she couldn't see."

"And I suppose they sailed up to the gates in his boat, too, right?"

"A joke? From you?" Eddie faked surprise. "Are you taking a break from brooding today, or did you hit some kind of quota?"

Tanner gave him a grin as he looked back out at the sunset, enjoying the final beams of light cutting through the trees just beyond the wall before the sun would be gone until morning. "But a baby? Really?"

Eddie joined him, leaning forward with his arms resting on the edge. "I know. Hard to believe a baby could survive out there, right? He's a cute little guy from what I hear. Named AJ."

"We spent so much time in the shit out there," Tanner said, "That we never thought a baby could make it. It's good to see at least something nice happen."

Eddie lost his usual mirth. "Yeah, well Edith told me that a lot of people died to get that baby here. That Bulova M6 Clem had apparently belonged to some friends of hers that didn't make it. A couple of farmboys and some old dude, like, a dad or an uncle or something."

"Wait," Tanner stopped him, "That 'what' that she had?"

"Huh?"

"The watch," Tanner said. "You just called it something weird."

"Oh," Eddie said with realization. "Sorry. It was a Bulova M6. Made by the Bulova Company in 1966. They were a watch manufacturer, and on the back they stamp these letters and-"

"I get it, Eddie, I get it." The two held a moment of silence, each mentally cataloguing the friends they had lost as they looked to the dimming horizon. "We all know what loss feels like, don't we?"

"Yeah," Eddie agreed. "She said that watch was for AJ when he grows up. And that pirate guy's hat, too. Man, when that kid gets older he's gonna look epic." He turned back to see Edith and Clem just getting down from the wall, and Tanner noticed a glint of determination shine in his eyes. "I'm gonna tell her."

It took Tanner a few seconds to discern what he was talking about. "Eddie, don't you dare."

"I'm telling her, man. About Zack."

"Let him do what he thinks-"

"Sorry," Eddie waved back as he ran toward them, "I can't hear you over the sound of all the fucks I don't give!"

A warm smile crossed Tanner's face as he watched Eddie dash over to Edith and Clementine. It was almost too normal, but he allowed himself to enjoy it while it lasted. It was almost possible to forget about everything that had happened.

Almost.

"What's up?" Lucy paced over to his side, watching Eddie run to Edith and Clementine as they dismounted the wall. "Did Eddie make some new friends?"

"Yeah," Tanner said. "So what's the news on me and Eddie? Do we get to stay?"

Lucy looked out at the wilderness stretching before the walls, taking in the surrounding nature with a look of content before she began to talk. "It's settled. McKay says it's alright if you and Eddie stay, on the condition that you're out there gathering supplies with me and Zack. So welcome to Team 3."

"Did you tell Eddie yet?"

"Yeah. He was pretty upbeat about it. Also, heads up Tanner, because we're going back out at the end of the month."

Perplexed, he kept his gaze on the setting sun. "Not sooner?"

"No," she answered casually, "Not sooner. We're planning a route at the moment. I think we're going to be heading for somewhere in Arkansas, but this run is only in the planning stages right now." Tanner caught a glimpse of something in her hand. A circular metal band glinting in the last light of dusk as she fixated on it, turning it over and over in her hands like a cherished heirloom and the last of its kind.

He pointed to it and tried to get a better view. "What's that? A ring?"

"Yeah," she mumbled. "Wedding ring."

"Ah." Tanner couldn't find anything to say that wouldn't make the conversation worse.

"Farley gave it to me almost a year before the walkers came," she reminisced. "I always kept it close. It was the one thing I managed to save when our house burned down in the early days, when nobody knew what was happening. I couldn't even get Dad out of there. Just this little ring." Her sullen face rose to get another view of the sunset. "It's all I have left of him, and my old life. Everything else is dust and I can feel more of it slipping through my fingers with each day."

It struck him like lightning. "Wait," he told her, rummaging around in his pocket, "I can't believe I forgot." She looked at him with sad, listless eyes as pieces of metal could be heard clanking in his pocket while he attempted to pull whatever he had in there out.

The two sets of dogtags slid out with subtle clinks, hanging there between the two in the dying light. Lucy's heart shot all the way to the throat at the sight of them. "You had… are those really…?"

Tanner set the identification tags in her hand. "From both of them," he told her. "I kept them to force myself to remember so I'd keep trying to do better, but they belong to you."

Wordlessly she slipped the tags off their chains and rearranged them purposefully. Taking her ring, she slid it onto the first of the two chains before fastening it back together and placing the tags around her neck with a muffled sniffle. She handed the second chain, the one without the ring, back to Tanner. He held it close, examining the tags as the light was becoming difficult to read in, but there was just enough for him to make out the words stamped into the metal.

One tag on his chain was from Conner, and the other was from Farley. Lucy held hers out to show him that she likewise had a tag from each hanging from her chain alongside the ring. "Thank you," she told him with a tear. "I didn't think I'd have anything of Conner, but this is… it's more than I could have hoped for."

"Now we can remember them together," he told her.

"Don't get all sappy," she smiled sadly. "They were my family. That's my job."

"Yeah, sorry," he apologized with a smirk.

"Oh, and before _I_ forget, you and I have a date coming up."

"A what?" he asked, puzzled.

"Yeah, you, me, and this," she told him, pulling Beth's journal from her coat. "Zack picked it up before we left the radio station. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet, and I figured you'd want to see what's in it to."

"You're sure that's okay?" he ventured cautiously. "Eddie told me what you were going to do when… you know, at the radio station."

She sighed heavily, letting her hand drift up to the chain around her neck and grasp at the tags. "Honestly, I probably would have killed you," she said. "It was the heat of the moment. But I've tried to hate you ever since then. I've really tried, but you saved Zack's life. You spent more than a year looking for my brother in all of that shit out there," she said, waving to the landscape outside the safety of Wellington's walls. "And I just can't bring myself to do it. It might have been your fault, but I can tell that you're trying hard to do the right thing. You seem like a decent man."

"That… it means a lot, Lucy," he thanked her, looking away. In the distance he could hear the bustle of guards changing shifts. The night watch had begun.

"We're both off duty tomorrow, so how about we meet back up here?"

"Why not inside?" Tanner questioned.

"Because I like the fresh air," she said. "Besides, it'll be nice to have a view. And you can fill me in on all the details that aren't in this book, okay?"

"Okay," Tanner agreed. "I'd like that. Tomorrow. Right here."

"I'll see you then," she yawned, stretching. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sleep. Showing emotion takes a lot out of me, you know?"

He gave a small chuckle as she strode away and dismounted the wall. The dark violet of the night sky clashed against the waning orange of the sun in the distance, slowly pushing it out of sight. In a few minutes it would be gone, and a few minutes after that the light it gave off would vanish with it.

Again he was approached, the heavy footsteps plodding up behind him giving Zack away almost immediately. "Talking with the Boss, I see?"

"Yeah," Tanner told him. "It went okay. More or less."

"I can tell," said. "I haven't seen her that… well, happy wouldn't be the word, I suppose, but something's different about her now. She's more like she was when we left, before we found you and Stoner."

"That's good," Tanner smiled.

"You seem different too, Hero," Zack stated. "I've never seen you like this before."

"I do?"

"Yeah," Zack said. "You seem… lighter, now. Like you're not weighed down. It's good."

"I feel different too," Tanner told him. "Thanks to you."

"To me?"

"You didn't give up on me. I was doing everything I could to keep myself outside these walls. If you'd let me then I wouldn't be here to help this place. Now that I'm here I have a purpose. Going out on these long, dangerous supply runs? I actually feel like I can do something good. I can actually make a difference, and for once that difference can be for the better. I know I've got a long way ahead of me, but I think I can see a little light up ahead. It's so far into the distance I'm not even sure it really is there, but I think I might actually be able to make up my mistakes for the first time in… I'm not even sure."

"It's a good feeling," Zack agreed. "I know what it's like. We'll keep going out, putting ourselves on the line so that other people, better people, don't have to, and one day we might just get to be one of them."

"I feel great," Tanner said. "For the first time in years I can walk with my head up. My mistakes, they still weigh on me, but it's not as crushing as it was before we got here." Tanner stopped leaning and straightened up, taking in a deep breath of the frigid winter air. "I can _breathe_ Zack. Last night I was able to get some honest to God sleep. I feel human again."

Zack's hand landed on his shoulder with an affectionate, shattering force. "I told you we'd be alright, didn't I?"

"You did," he said. "It's been years, but I feel… free." Tanner nodded at the horizon with closed eyes as the last of the sun was pulled out of sight. "After so long, I'm finally free."


End file.
